Willie Grobler

Description:

Willie Grobler was a cousin and a close friend of Fanie Eloff who visited him several times in Paris. During Grobler’s visit, after the First World War in 1920, he was ‘kidnapped’ by Franz Lehar (1870 - 1948), an Austrian composer, and Eloff saved him by flying to Vienna in his small Gipsy Moth plane. Due to this close relationship Eloff used Grobler as the model for all his Faun sculptures . The plaster of this work is in the University of Pretoria Art Collection and the bronze bust remains in the possession of the Grobler family.